Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook can be a great marketing tool if you know how to use them the right way. They can also be an incredible source of valuable information if you know what to look for. Social media sites can teach you a lot about your target audience, and their needs and wants.

Search

Take the time to do a series of searches related to your niche on social media every week. Pick a set of terms, or phrases that relate directly to what you’re doing, and search them on social media. The results will contain people talking about your niche, and what’s going on in it. If you take the time to read through some of those results, you’ll get two things out of  it. First, you’ll get new friends and followers. By taking the time to connect with the people you find through these searches, you’re gaining high quality friends and followers. Second, you’re gaining valuable information about what people in your niche are talking about. The more you know about their interests, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Polls

Set up a poll on your website that asks questions about your customers, and their wants and needs, and what they think of your products. Use social media to spread that poll around to your friends and followers. If you’ve been using social media the right way, and interacting with them on a regular basis, they’ll most likely leap at the chance to give you feedback. If you don’t get the response you’re hoping for right off the bat, create a contest around the poll, and offer one lucky poll taker a prize.

Questions

If you want to know something about your customers, just ask. By asking questions on social media sites, you’re achieving two different things. First, you’re interacting with your friends and followers in a meaningful way. Second, if they’re answering your questions, you’re learning about them and their needs at the same time.

By spending some time with social media, you can turn it into a valuable market research tool. The more you can learn about your customers, the better equipped you’ll be to sell your products to them.

If you read this site, you probably already know you can use Twitter to promote your website. What you might not know is that it can also be a valuable market research tool. Twitter can help you learn a lot about your audience, and their opinions about your products.

Solicited Feedback

If you have a large number of followers that are interested in your products, poll them whenever you want some feedback about a feature. Just ask your users a question, and wait for some responses. If you don’t get any responses right away, ask again later. The responses to your questions will give you some idea of the overall attitude of your customers toward your products.

Unsolicited Feedback

If your followers care about your products, they’ll @reply you and let you know what they think of your stuff. Take that criticism to heart. Unsolicited feedback is the most honest feedback you’ll ever get. Unsolicited feedback comes from customers that genuinely care about your products. If you get a lot of positive feedback about a product, try to apply the best features of that product to other products. If you get a lot of negative feedback about a product, try to improve the features your users didn’t care for before launching another product in the same line.

Search Results

Even if they’re not addressing their comments your users might still be talking about your products. Once a week, do a Twitter search for your products, and your company name. Keep an eye on what people are saying about you in the search results, and you can get a good idea of how people feel about your company and your products. You can also use the search results to get an understanding of what topics your niche is interested in.

Twitter is an extremely useful tool for marketing your site, and your products, but it’s just as useful in developing your marketing strategies. Pay attention to your user’s feedback, and keep up on your niche’s interests by doing frequent searches, and you will be able to keep evolving your marketing strategies in a profitable direction.